“Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the study of Addison.” Samuel Johnson
Joseph Addison was a very educated man, with a history in government and also an education at Oxford, best known for his essay writing. He was co-founder of the Spectator and of the Guardian between 1711 and 1714, and he also began work on his political paper, The Freeloader, by 1715.
Addison and the Spectator
What I picked up on from the essay was his slight disregard for Aristotle’s methods, “written with Regularity and Method”, going on to describe his own ways, “I have several Thoughts on a Subject without troubling my self to range them in such order, that they may seem to grow out of one another,” This slightly confused me because later he talks about how he likes methodical writing, and likens writing with no method to being in a “Wood” with the “greatest Confusion and Disorder”.
From reading his work, it seems he does think in terms of logic, as broad as his statements may be. He describes long publications as repetitive, whereas short works are more concise, probably in favour of his own style of writing, “do not expect to meet with anything in a bulky Volume”. I agree with this, because if something is concise, it is more to the point and the reader can pick up on what the writer is trying to convey, as opposed to a longer publication, which could be repetitive.
He does speak very logically, and with a lot of sense, explaining that when something makes sense to a reader, “your Eye commands the whole Prospect, and gives you such an idea of it, as is not easily worn out of the Memory.” This is very true and can be linked to all kinds of writing, from blog entries to magazine articles; the reader will always remember something that makes sense and is interesting to them, much like a journalist’s story.
It appears from his writing that generally he likes things to be methodical; “in a regular series”. He sees irregularity as only supportable in “Men of great Learning or Genius”, “often too full to be exact”, “throw down Pearls in Heaps before the Reader, rather than be at the Pains of stringing them”.
“The Advantages of a Reader from a methodical Discourse, are correspondent with those of the Writer. He comprehends every thing easily, takes it in with Pleasure, and retains it long.”
This relates so easily to Journalism, because there is a clear relationship between the writer and reader in any piece of writing. I think it is really interesting to see that at the start of real Journalism, of which Addison was one of the first, this idea was at the root of it and still is today.
He’s also right when he likens arguing men to Cuttlefish, in that when a cuttlefish is “unable to extricate himself, blackens all the Water about him till he becomes invisible”. This is a really interesting analogy, because when arguing, I think it’s likely to lose the focus of the argument, in Addison’s words, “to borrow a Phrase from the Dispensory, a barren superfluity of Words; the Fruit is lost amidst the Exuberance of Leaves”. This can be paralleled almost with the use of interviews and quotes in modern journalism, and probably even back in the 16th Century, people can be misquoted to ‘blacken the water’.
Again showing his allegiance with the methodic thinker, he seems to favour Will Dry, a friend of his, a man of few words but a “clear methodical Head” as compared to Tom Puzzle, “a free-thinker”.
The Royal Exchange
From the start, as the reader we can gather Addison fancies himself as a “citizen of the world”, talking about the world and all it’s offerings, generally appearing to be very worldly. He refers to products from other countries across the globe, “The food often grows in one country, and the sauce in another”. From both essays we see that he is very wise, and knowledgeable. However basic his points may be, there is no doubt about his logic.
He does, however, find a way to link almost everything back to Britain, and implying that Britain has a certain ownership over the World, which I suppose was a likely view given the British Empire at the time. “Trade, without enlarging the British territories, has given us some kind of additional Empire.”, “My friend Sir Andrew calls the vineyards of France our gardens, the spice-islands our hot beds; the Persians our silk weavers, and the Chinese our potters”
The repeated use of “our” implies a sense of everything belonging to the British Empire, and he seems very proud of this.
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